BST 84323

Duke Pearson - Merry Ole Soul

Released - 1969

Recording and Session Information

Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 25, 1969 Duke Pearson, piano, celeste; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Mickey Roker, drums.

3705 tk.4 Sleigh Ride

A&R Studios, NYC, August 19, 1969
Duke Pearson, piano, celeste #1-7, piano #8; Bob Cranshaw, bass #1-7; Mickey Roker, drums #1-7; Airto Moreira, percussion #1-7.

3712 (tk.4) Jingle Bells
3706 (tk.9) Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
3707 (tk.7) Go Tell It On A Mountain
3708 (tk.2) Little Drummer Boy
3711 (tk.1) Silent Night
3710 (tk.2) Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
3725 (tk.3) Wassail Song 8.
         (tk.2) O Little Town Of Bethlehem

Liner Notes

Manhattan's Eighth Avenue in the Mid-Forties has a slightly rancid quality about it. It's a worn street waiting to be reclaimed by American business in the fashion of Time & Life, Penny's and others who have erected huge stone monuments as grave markers for their future demise. Eighth Avenue bares the scars of neglect, misuse and abuse: dirty broken buildings, dirty broken movies, dirty broken parking lots and dirty broken bars that are inhabited by the defeated residents of the area who stare vacantly through the time filthied windows searching for others of their breed. They find a face, a body deflated by loss of dignity and think, "You're me, and I'm you." They're looking at you.

You feel the whole world is jaundiced — malignant — and has infected everybody and everything in it.

As you gaze back into this sea of despair you recall a farmer you once knew in a place called Sandusky, Michigan. You wouldn't know Sandusky by name unless you were from the immediate area but it's exactly like every other small town you've ever been in rural America. The farmer was in a laundromat. A laundromat usually occupies about an hour of your time because that's how long it usually takes for the average load of clothes to wash and dry and he was there for the duration. His shirt was open at the neck and there was a long sharp line around his Adam's apple that extended half the circumference of his neck. Below the line his skin was white and sallow, above it deep brown and weather-beaten (no mistaking his chosen profession). And then there were his eyes. Watching everyone coming and going — apprehensive. Not changing, not turning, just waiting. So you smile, and in return a grin passes over his whole face and the eyes come alive. God it seemed so simple. Just a smile and a man comes alive. This man, this farmer, is a human being who lives on the back eighty off some deserted road where at night the only illumination against the darkness is the blue shaded light of a television set revealing the reality that comes from a spot not far from Eighth Avenue.

So he leaves with his laundry and his wife, and you think to yourself, "What the hell difference does all the nonsense of the world make when life is so short and we dream so many dreams and long for so much response.

So you smile as you walk Eighth Avenue, and the youngster with hair down to his neck where there is no line of sun but only sweat, looks up at you, afraid to face the world without a disguise, and he sees the smile. He comes back with a grin and he's a farmer. The old man, stealing a quick look at the neat, long legs of an approaching dancer from a Broadway theatre, smiles when you catch his eye and he knows, without a word being spoken, that you caught him in a young act, and he grins and God, he too is a farmer.

Even the prostitutes, who speak with that high-pitched squeak that overcomes all bus and truck noise, grin when you smile at them. They grin and they move on, and they know and you know and they are farmers. Ha!

If you are still reading, the question, no doubt, is "What has all of this got to do with the music in this album?"

Well, this is the music that is like the grin that lights up that farmer back in Sandusky or Forestville or Deckerville or Atlanta or Eighth Avenue.

Christmas songs are an immense fishnet that drag up a thousand memories: Parents, brothers and sisters, trees, lights, gifts, food, parties, no school, late nights, kindness, charity, generosity, laughter, secrets, dreams (huge ones) ...love.

Tall, lean Duke Pearson (songwriter, band leader, football player, parent, record company executive, friend, piano player, dreamer, Christian, black) is no farmer but he smiles. And when he does, the world is a good place and that damn Eighth Avenue is no longer dirty and broken. The old buildings become monuments, and the men and women who wander the length of the street are God's creatures and the world is no longer sick and yellow with disease.

Bob Cranshaw, the bassist, smiles all the way through, as does Mickey Roker on drums and Airto Moreira on percussion.

This is a package of straight, reflective music that is happy, pensive, filled with memories, sober, joyful. Smiles along Eighth Avenue and in Sandusky and now here.

I just hope that farmer in Sandusky buys this record and reads these notes. I think he'll see himself as he listens to Duke — and smiles again.

Joy.

FATHER NORMAN O'CONNER
HOST — DIAL M FOR MUSIC
WCBS TV — NEW YORK, N.Y.

75th Anniversary Reissue Notes

Bobby Timmons beat Duke Pearson to the punch when he recorded Holiday Soul for Prestige in November 1964 with Butch Warren and Walter Perkins completing his trio. Five years later, Duke Pearson gave Blue Note its first Christmas album with 'Merry Ole Soul." The album included Bob Cranshaw on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. The magic ingredient was Airto Moreira and his imaginative array of percussive instruments.

Repertoire in holiday albums doesn't vary much; it's what you do with those holiday songs that count / Pearson strips them down to their essentials and makes them swing in a very sly, funky manner.

The album was first recorded on February 25, 1969, but only "Sleigh Ride" was used from that session. On August 19th, everyone returned to recut all the tracks. And those were the versions that made the final album. "Old Fashioned Christmas" was only recorded at the first session and left behind until the 2003 release of "Duke Pearson Mosaic Select" (MS-008) which issued this track for the first time.

Michael Cuscuna